1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of tissue reconstruction and repair, and more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to seeded tissue engineering techniques utilizing a tissue culture frame, as well as a tissue graft formed by such methods.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
At least twenty-five percent of the clinical problems in pediatric urology are caused by neurologic lesions that affect lower urinary tract function. These clinical presentations are highlighted by urinary incontinence, urinary tract infections and decreased bladder compliance that leads to increased pressure transmission to the upper urinary tract which leads to subsequent renal deterioration. The monetary cost to our health care system of treating children with dysfunctional bladders runs into millions of dollars each year. Therefore, the need for bladder augmentation has increased in both the adult and pediatric population. This increased need requires surgical techniques that are clinically and socially acceptable and allow these children and adults to live a healthier and more normal life. The current methods of treatment of bladder dysfunction leave those goals largely unmet and must be improved if we hope to improve the prognosis of this large population of urology patients.
The gastrointestinal tract has been the autologous tissue source of choice for genitourinary reconstruction in both the adult and pediatric population. Deleterious side effects associated with the use of bowel include infection, intestinal obstruction, mucus production, electrolyte abnormalities, perforation and neoplasia. These potential side effects have ignited tissue engineering research involving bladder reconstruction through bladder regeneration. These endeavors have shown that there is an urgent need for the development of biodegradable materials with predictable behavior and well characterized mechanical properties that can be used as alternatives to gastrointestinal segments for bladder reconstruction. The major obstacle to advancing the field of urinary tract reconstruction and rehabilitation has been the availability of a biomaterial, either permanent or biodegradable, that will function as a suitable scaffold to allow the natural process of regeneration to occur. The ideal graft material would be replaced by the host tissue, promote the development of a structurally intact low pressure reservoir, and serve as a scaffold for the healing and regeneration of the bladder wall. If a suitable exogenous graft material was available, the need for autogenous tissue and all of the negative consequences associated with its harvest could be eliminated. Therefore, investigators continue to search for the proper scaffold and methodology that is necessary to regenerate tissue and maximally restore urinary tract function. Currently, two technologies involving tissue engineering for bladder regeneration and augmentation are being investigated.
The first reconstructive technology, the in vivo or unseeded tissue engineering technique for bladder regeneration, employs xenogenic (derived from stomach, bladder and small intestine) or synthetic biodegradable, acellular matrices. Such tissue engineering technique involves the direct in vivo placement of an unseeded biodegradable material into a host that will then function as a scaffold to allow the natural process of regeneration to occur. While this technology provides the scaffold for wound healing and tissue regeneration, it also requires the host to provide the tissue and proper environment for cell growth and tissue regeneration.
There are two major obstacles for in vivo or unseeded tissue engineering technology for bladder regeneration. The first has been finding a biomaterial that will act as a suitable scaffold for this natural process to occur. Synthetic non-biodegradable biomaterials such as silicone, rubber, polytetrafluoroethylene, and polypropylene have been unsuccessful because of mechanical failure, lithogenesis, or host foreign body reactions (see, e.g., Kudish, H. G., J. Urol. 78:232 (1957); Ashkar, L. and Heller, E., J. Urol. 98:91 (1967); Kelami et al, J. Urol. 104:693 (1970)). As a consequence of failures with non-biodegradable materials, synthetic biodegradable materials have been investigated that would allow the host bladder time for regeneration but then dissolve prior to the onset of any foreign body reaction. These materials have been applied experimentally and have shown improvement over non-biodegradable materials. Xenogenic, collagen-rich biodegradable materials such as placenta, amnion and pericardium have been used with even more encouraging experimental results than studies employing non-biodegradable synthetic materials. However, despite initial encouraging results, none of these materials have been found to be suitable for clinical use. It has been reported that bladders augmented with dura, peritoneum, placenta and fascia contract over time, and that such tissue grafts fail to promote complete bladder wall regeneration (i.e., tissue having a urine impermeable layer and a functional muscle cell layer) (Kelami, et al, J. Urol. 105:518 (1971)).
The second potential limitation of the unseeded tissue engineering technique for bladder regeneration is that the size of the graft may be limited to the amount of area which can be quickly invested with bladder cells from the remaining native bladder, and therefore may not be sufficient for bladder replacement. If the ratio of the size of the unseeded graft to the amount of native bladder tissue becomes too large, the ability of the animal to invest the graft with SMC and urothelial cells appears to be compromised. In the absence of quickly covering the graft with bladder cells, contraction and excess scar formation becomes a concern and poor clinical outcomes may result.
Clearly a tissue graft material is desired which is non-immunogenic, not subject to gross shrinkage after implantation, and which promotes the growth of endogenous urinary bladder tissues having a urine impermeable cell layer and a functional muscle cell layer. A collagen-based biomaterial called small intestinal submucosa (SIS) is a xenogenic membrane harvested from pig small intestine in which the tunica mucosa is mechanically removed from the inner surface, and the serosa and tunica muscularis are mechanically removed from the outer surface. This produces a thin, translucent graft (0.1 mm wall thickness) composed mainly of the submucosal layer of the intestinal wall. The submucosal layer of animal intestine has an established background in surgery as gut suture. This collagen-rich membrane has been previously shown to function well as an arterial or venous graft eliciting rapid replacement by native tissues. It has also been shown to have excellent host compatibility and remodeling when submucosal bladder injections of minced SIS were performed in pigs. To date, SIS has been shown to be non-immunogenic with over 1,000 cross-species transplants and direct challenge testing, demonstrating the lack of immunogenicity thereof. Additionally, SIS has been shown to contain a combination of active intrinsic growth factors, cytokines, structural proteins, glycoproteins and proteoglycans that may assist in cell migration and cell to cell interaction as well as cell growth and differentiation during the regenerative process. Based upon these highly desirable characteristics, it appears that SIS has potential as a universal tissue graft.
Initial research using SIS for urinary bladder augmentation was performed in a rat model, and SIS was shown to function as a scaffold to allow the native rat bladder to remodel and regenerate itself. Histologically, the regenerated rat bladders contained all three layers of the bladder (urothelium, smooth muscle and serosa) and were indistinguishable from normal rat bladder at 11 months post-augmentation (Kropp et al, Urology 46:396 (1995)). In addition, in vitro contractility studies showed that strips of in vivo tissue engineered SIS-regenerated rat bladder had contractile properties and nerve regeneration that was similar to the normal rat bladder (Vaught et al, J. Urol. 155:374 (1996)). This was the first evidence that a functional bladder could be achieved with tissue engineering techniques. It also demonstrated that SIS was different than other biomatrix materials that have been studied in the past. Previously, no other material had shown the ability to promote the regenerative capacity of bladder tissue that SIS was demonstrating in the small animal model.
A long term, large animal model evaluating in vivo tissue engineering of SIS bladder augmentation, in which 40% of a canine bladder was removed and replaced with a similar size piece of SIS, demonstrated that the regenerated bladder remained urodynamically compliant with similar capacities as control dogs. There were no deleterious side effects or upper tract changes up to 15 months post-augmentation. Gross examination revealed that all three layers of the bladder had regenerated. However, the quantity and organization of smooth muscle fibers differed slightly from the normal bladder (Kropp et al, J. Urol. 155:2098 (1996)). In vitro contractility bladder strip studies performed on the SIS-regenerated portions of the bladder demonstrated contractile activity and expression of muscarinic, adrenergic and purinergic receptors similar to normal bladder. As was the case in the rat model, SIS-regenerated bladder also demonstrated functional nerve regeneration and innervation that is similar to normal bladder. Finally, in vitro stress/strain compliance studies demonstrated no significant difference between SIS-regenerated bladder and control bladder, both of which were 30-fold more compliant than the original SIS graft material (Kropp et al, J. Urol. 156:599 (1996)).
Critical histological analysis of the regenerated bladder tissue has revealed that the collagen-to-muscle ratio is increased in small intestinal submucosa regenerated bladder compared to normal bladder and that the degree of regeneration is variable within a given graft. The clinical and functional implications of these findings are not clear. In addition, while the obstacle of identifying a biomaterial that will act as a suitable scaffold for the natural process of bladder regeneration to occur is overcome by the use of SIS in unseeded tissue engineering technology, the obstacle of the limited size of a graft formed therefrom still exists.
The second tissue reconstruction technology, the in vitro or seeded tissue engineering technique, utilizes biodegradable materials that serve as both a scaffold for the regeneration process to occur as well as cell-delivery vehicles. This technology involves initial harvesting of bladder tissue, such as from a biopsy from host native tissue, to establish primary cultures of bladder cells. Cilento et al. (J. Urol. 152:665 (1994)) demonstrated that it is theoretically possible to expand a transitional epithelial strain to cover the area of an entire football field using this method of cell culture. These cells are then seeded on a biodegradable membrane and, following a period of graft maturation, the in vitro created bladder graft is then transplanted back into the host for continuation of the regeneration process.
In 1992, Atala et al (J. Urol. 148:658 (1992)) demonstrated the successful use of non-woven polyglycolic acid polymers (PAP) to facilitate the in vitro growth of rabbit and human bladder epithelium and smooth muscle cells. They further demonstrated that human transitional epithelium and smooth muscle cells grown on the biodegradable polymers could then be implanted into athymic mice and grown in vivo, and that the tissue architecture became progressively more complex with time in the animal.
Recently, Yoo et al (Urology 51:221 (1998)) and Oberpenning et al (Nat. Biotechnol. 17:149 (1999)) reported on the feasibility of dog bladder augmentation using allogenic bladder submucosa and PAP membranes seeded with urothelial and smooth muscle cells. This study demonstrated that transitional epithelium and smooth muscle cells could be harvested, grown and subsequently seeded on allogenic bladder submucosa for use as augmentation material. Urodynamically, the augmented bladder demonstrated increased capacity during this short term study. Interestingly, the allogenic bladder submucosa which was unseeded also demonstrated the ability to increase bladder capacity, however the gains in capacity were less than the seeded grafts. Studies such as this as well as those of Atala et al suggest that prior cell seeding of large bladder grafts may be necessary to obtain the best clinical outcome following bladder augmentation. Unfortunately, although the in vitro technique of tissue engineering has been shown to be feasible for both synthetic and xenogenic matrices, thus far no studies have been undertaken to determine the effectiveness of the materials to facilitate the regeneration of functional bladder tissue in a large animal.
Therefore, there is a need felt within the art to identify a method of tissue engineering which will provide a large-scale, functional urinary tract tissue graft composition for repairing damaged urinary tract tissue which overcomes the disadvantages and defects of the prior art.